I recently received the story below from a mother in hopes that her story could be an inspiration to others:

I always felt that church was a place of refuge, but one Mother’s Day in 2004, what I experienced from so many “well wishing” people almost changed my opinion.

Many had heard that I was hoping to become a mother. I often asked them to pray for my husband and I that we will soon be blessed with a baby. But for some reason, this particular Mother’s Day I had become frustrated, angry, and sad that despite going through fertility treatment, I was still not a mother. I did not have a child, so Mother’s Day was no time to celebrate. For me, it was a day of mourning, and nobody seemed to understand.

There were a few women in the church that I considered friends. So, I confided in one of them about my struggle. My struggle to conceive, my struggle to come to terms with the reality that my life was not going as I had planned, and how I was simply struggling to get through Mother’s Day. It wasn’t a long discussion, but through it, she was able to gain a greater insight and understanding of my plight. An unexpected twist of fate happened as my confidante began to share my feelings with some of the others, who thankfully stopped questioning me about the progress of building our family.

A few weeks later, my friend shared with me she hoped I might consider adoption as a viable option for my family. Admittedly, I didn’t want to hear it at the time but she told me that it may not be the will of the Lord for me to give birth right now. She encouraged me to consider giving it to the Lord and letting him lead, rather than stressing MYSELF over it. She told me that there were adoption professionals that I could talk to that would explain everything that I needed to know. At first, I thought to myself, this won’t work for me — it’s not what we want. But as the conversation continued, I began to see things from a different perspective.

I told my husband about the conversation and he surprisingly agreed. He confessed he had become concerned about me and he just wanted me happy. We tearfully realized together that somewhere along the way, in all the tests and procedures and failures, we had lost sight of our goal to be parents and were solely focused on achieving a pregnancy. He wanted a child to love just as much as I did, and adoption could make it happen when my body could not.

This Mother’s Day will be very different. Our family will be at church: my husband, our two adopted daughters, and I. I can’t wait to take the opportunity to share the beauty of families built through God’s miracle of adoption!

God bless you all on Mother’s Day!